


A Short and Shrinking List

by rosehips



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Gen, Just angst, That's it, This is NOT a fix-it fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 13:44:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13614585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosehips/pseuds/rosehips
Summary: Oliva Benson used to keep a list. Not written down, no — just tucked away in the pocket of her mind, where no one could find it, where she could look at it whenever she needed to.These are the things that can never be taken from me. These are the things that are safe.The list was never very long. And it's only getting shorter.





	A Short and Shrinking List

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in approximately 30 minutes during a fit of post-"The Undiscovered Country" tears and bitterness and A LOT of projecting.
> 
> It does not have a happy ending, just FYI.

Oliva Benson used to keep a list. Not written down, no — just tucked away in the pocket of her mind, where no one could find it, where she could look at it whenever she needed to. 

Which wasn’t too often, really. She’d go months, nearly years, at a time without having to reference it. Without the desperation that could only be calmed by going down it, item by item, and reminding herself that as bad as things could get, there was always a limit.

_This is a list of the things that can never be taken from me. This is a list of the things that are safe._

_My body._  
_My mind._  
_My soul._  
_My work._  
_My son.  
_ _My best friend._

Sitting in her empty living kitchen now, Noah fast asleep in his bedroom, she doesn’t know why she ever bothered.  
  
  
_My body._

She should have let that one go after Sealview. She did, for a little while, and then she added it back. Because she hadn’t been raped, and even if she had, her body would still be her own. Didn’t she tell that to victims all the time? _You are still your own, you are still yourself. There are some things that cannot be taken from you._

Then William Lewis took her and even when she beat him, even when she chopped off her hair, even when she saw his body laid out on a slab in the morgue, it wasn’t enough. 

Still, she refuses to cross it entirely off the list. Sometimes it feels right to keep it there. Some days she thinks she only lets it stay out of principle, not because it feels real. And so really, she’s not sure that it counts.  
  
  
_My mind._

Nightmares, recklessness, mistakes and regrets. It’s the same as her body, really. Hers, but she has to be wary. Usually she trusts her own judgment. Or at least in some areas she does. She knows she has her weak spots.   
  
  
_My soul._

What had she said to Laurel Linwood? _Your soul is not dead._

Neither is Olivia’s, she knows. She has faith in that, at least. But despite their power, souls are insubstantial. You can’t hold them, or be held by them, and even if you could she’s so tired of being the only one to comfort herself.  
  
  
_My son._

But he _had_ been taken from her.

She got him back. She got him back and she held onto him so tightly, she still does, but the nightmares still aren’t entirely gone and she knows that she’ll never feel secure when it comes to him.

Is it comforting, she thinks, that fear is always a part of parenting? She learned that from Amanda, when they talked after it happened. _I know I can’t imagine what you went through, and I’m so sorry. It’s just… sometimes I think being a mom means being afraid all the time,_ Amanda said. _You love them so much it can’t not be scary._

She amends this item from “my son” to “my love for my son.” It brings her no comfort at all.  
  
  
_My work._

This too had been taken, or nearly. She still remembers the fury she felt when she reduced 17 years of her life to the contents of an evidence box that she didn’t let anyone help her carry. 

They let her go back, of course. But _they_ let her. She was at their mercy.

She knows that no matter what happens, she will have the fact that she did have it. But the idea that it could be taken, or that she might one day be so ground down she’ll have to leave…   
  
  
_My best friend._

And God, that was it. 

She should have learned. Didn’t Elliot try to warn her, in his silent way? When had she fooled herself, after he left, into thinking it was safe to put this one back on her list? 

You can’t hold onto people who don’t want to be held. You can’t keep people on a list and think that will keep them in your life. 

 _I’m you now, Liv,_ Rafael had said. But he was gone from her.

 _Don’t say it,_ he’d said, as if he could read her mind, but he couldn’t. What did he think she was going to say? He couldn’t have realized what she was thinking. If he knowingly forbade her from telling him she loved him — she wouldn’t be able to forgive that. The selfishness. She wants to tell him now, she wants to force him to hear it, she wants to dare him to walk away from it, from her, like he walked away from her and left her alone on a cold and busy street even as they were both crying, he left her. _He left me. He left me._

He hasn’t called and she’s not going to try to call him.

He was the one who walked away. 

If he wants her, he knows where to find her.

She’s not going to make a fool of herself again.  
  
  
_This is a list of things that are mine, even when they don’t feel like it, even when I don’t want them._

 _My body._  
_My mind._  
_My soul._  
_My grief._  
_My anger._  
  
  
_This is a list of things that cannot be taken away from me._

 _The work I have already done._  
_My love for my son._  
  
  
And what does that leave her with to safely hold onto?

Herself. Only herself.

She had to learn this lesson sooner or later, she supposes. 

But it’s not fair, and she doesn't want to be alone.


End file.
